1923 in science

The year 1923 in science and technology involved some significant events, listed below.

Aeronautics

• Juan de la Cierva invents the autogyro, a rotary-winged aircraft with an unpowered rotor.

Astronomy

• October 21 - First official public showing of a planetarium projector, a Zeiss model at the Deutsches Museum in Munich.^[1]

Biology

• Karl von Frisch publishes "Über die ‚Tiersprache|Sprache‘ der Bienen. Eine tierpsychologische Untersuchung" ("On the 'language' of bees: an examination of animal psychology").^[2]

Chemistry

• Dirk Coster and George de Hevesy publish their discovery of the transition metal element hafnium (₇₂Hf) in zirconium ore, working in Copenhagen (Latin: Hafnia).^[3][4]
• Niels Bohr and Dirk Coster, working in Copenhagen, produce a paper on X-ray spectroscopy and the periodic system of the elements.^[5]

Cryptography

• Enigma machine first produced commercially.^[6]

Electronics

• Otto Julius Zobel of Bell Labs describes the type of signal processing filter sections based on the image impedance design principle which will become known as Zobel networks.^[7]
• December 29 - Vladimir K. Zworykin files his first patent (in the United States) for "television systems".

Expeditions

• Tanager Expedition.

Medicine

• February - The Maudsley Hospital, established jointly by the London County Council and Henry Maudsley, admits its first psychiatric patients.
• First vaccine for Diphtheria

Paleontology

• July 13 - An American Museum of Natural History expedition to Mongolia under Roy Chapman Andrews is the first in the world to discover fossil dinosaur eggs. Initially thought to belong to the ceratopsian Protoceratops, they were determined in 1995 actually to belong to the theropod Oviraptor.^[8]

Awards

• Nobel Prizes
  • Physics: Robert Andrews Millikan
  • Chemistry: Fritz Pregl
  • Medicine: Frederick Grant Banting and John James Rickard Macleod
• Copley Medal: Horace Lamb
• Wollaston Medal for Geology: William Whitaker

Births

• January 1 - Daniel Gorenstein (died 1992), mathematician.
• February 13 - Chuck Yeager, pilot.
• March 9 - Walter Kohn, physicist.
• April 2 - G. Spencer-Brown, mathematician.
• April 23 - Walter Pitts (died 1969), logician and cognitive psychologist.
• July 31 - Stephanie Kwolek, polymer chemist.
• September 9 - Daniel Carleton Gajdusek, virologist.
• November 18 - Alan Shepard (died 1998), astronaut.

Deaths

• February 10 - Wilhelm Röntgen (born 1845), physicist, discoverer of X-rays, Nobel laureate.
• February 24 - Edward Morley (born 1838), chemist.
• March 8 - Johannes Diderik van der Waals (born 1837), physicist.
• March 27 - James Dewar (born 1842), chemist.
• August 23 - Hertha Ayrton (born 1854), electrical engineer.
• December 2 - Henry Haversham Godwin-Austen (born 1834), surveyor, geologist and naturalist.
• December 27 - Gustave Eiffel (born 1832), structural engineer.

References